New York police take precautions after purported al Qaeda threat
NEW YORK (CNN) -- New York police officers screened vehicles Saturday near Wall Street with radiation detection devices as "a precautionary measure" after an unconfirmed Web report about a possible radiological attack on U.S. cities.
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New York police scan traffic with radiation detectors Saturday morning in Manhattan.
The report was based on chatter allegedly seen Thursday on al Qaeda Web sites, but the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and New York Police Department insist the threat is unsubstantiated.
Octavia Nasr, CNN's senior editor for Arab affairs, said the purported message doesn't appear on any Web sites that CNN monitors and that the claim cannot be independently verified.
In addition, counterterrorism experts who work closely with CNN also were unable immediately to verify the claim, Nasr said.
The report about the purported radiological attacks was published on the Israeli Web site DEBKAfile based on a "rush of electronic chatter on al Qaeda sites."
One of the messages mentioned New York, Los Angeles, California, and Miami, Florida, as possible targets.
The New York Police Department stepped up some monitoring activities as a "precautionary measure," Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said late Friday.
Police set up barricades to slow traffic and on Saturday were pulling vans and trucks aside to aid in the detection of a possible radiological threat.
"While the threat remains unverified, our counterterrorism posture -- which is reconfigured daily based on intelligence from around the world -- has been modified," Browne said.
New York police have increased the deployment of radiological sensors on vehicles, boats and helicopters and set up vehicle checkpoints in the city, Lower Manhattan and at bridges and tunnels, Browne said.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "These actions are like those that the NYPD takes every day -- precautions against potential but unconfirmed threats that may never materialize."
The city's alert status for an attack was unchanged and remains at the "orange" or "high" level.
"As New Yorkers we have gone about our lives even with the daily threat level at 'orange' every day since September 11, 2001," Bloomberg said. "That threat level has not changed because of this unverified threat, and we shouldn't let anyone terrorize us by spreading fear."
The report about the purported radiological attacks was published on the Israeli Web site DEBKAfile based on a "rush of electronic chatter on al Qaeda sites."
The report does not provide a link to the purported al Qaeda "chatter" or post the original statements.
The "chatter" allegedly chastises Americans for not taking seriously the threats American al Qaeda member Adam Yahiye Gadahn made in an al Qaeda-produced video released last week. In that video Gadahn -- also known as Azzam the American -- says U.S. embassies and American interests "at home and abroad" were prime targets for terrorist attacks.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the purported threat was of "low credibility." But he said his agency was working with the Department of Homeland Security to share it with local authorities.
Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said, "We consider this threat to be unsubstantiated."
"There continues to be no credible or specific information telling us of an imminent threat to the homeland," Knocke said. "There is no substantial uptick in chatter. We are hearing more because we are better at collecting than we were in the summer of 2001."
But Knocke said his department supported New York's decision to take precautionary measures.
Officer Jason Lee, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said, "LAPD has not heard of any threats and is not aware of any warning on a federal, state or local level at this time."
Miami FBI Special Agent Judy Orihuela said, "We consider this to be of very very low credibility, and we're not doing anything differently in Miami."
